Ukrainian state-owned energy company Naftogaz said it has taken legal action in the United States to recover $5 billion awarded by an arbitration court in The Hague as compensation for damages and lost property in Crimea.
Naftogaz said in a news release on June 23 that it filed a motion in the U.S. District Court in Washington to confirm the award by the court in The Hague, which bound Russia to pay the compensation.
It said it had the right to file the case in the United States because the U.S. is one of a number of countries hosting Russian assets.
"Since Russia has not voluntarily paid the funds to Naftogaz as provided for by the award, we intend to leverage all available mechanisms to recover these funds," Naftogaz CEO Oleksiy Chernyshov said in the news release.
Naftogaz said hearings to determine the amount of compensation ended in March 2022 amid Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Arbitration Tribunal of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague issued its verdict on April 12 this yar, ordering Russia to pay Naftogaz $5 billion in compensation for unlawfully expropriating its assets in Crimea.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia would look at all possible ways to protect its legal rights in the case.
"All the legal details of this move will be worked on and ways will be considered to defend our legal rights," Peskov told reporters at a briefing.
Naftogaz's assets in Crimea included Chornomornaftogaz, which produced significant amounts of gas from the Black Sea. Plants and machinery, gas pipelines, ships, and the gas and oil deposits on the peninsula and offshore also are included among the assets. All of these are now under Russian control.
Russia, which launched its ongoing invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, seized Crimea in 2014 and illegally annexed the peninsula.